Turbo trellis-coded hierarchical modulation assisted decode-and-forward cooperation

Hierarchical modulation, which is also known as layered modulation, has been widely adopted across the telecommunication industry. Its strict backward compatibility with single-layer modems and its low complexity facilitate the seamless upgrading of wireless communication services. The potential employment of hierarchical modulation in cooperative communications has the promise of increasing the achievable throughput at a low power consumption. In this paper, we propose a single-relay aided hierarchical modulation based cooperative communication system. The source employs a pair of Turbo Trellis-Coded Modulation schemes relying on specially designed hierarchical modulation, while the relay invokes the Decode-and-Forward protocol. We have analysed the system’s achievable rate as well as its bit error ratio using Monte-Carlo simulations. The results demonstrate that the power consumption of the entire system is reduced to 3.62 dB per time slot by our scheme

Cross-layer optimization of unequal protected layered video over hierarchical modulation

Abstract-unequal protection mechanisms have been proposed at several layers in order to improve the reliability of multimedia contents, especially for video data. The paper aims at implementing a multi-layer unequal protection scheme, which is based on a Physical-Transport-Application cross-layer design. Hierarchical modulation, in the physical layer, has been demonstrated to increase the overall user capacity of a wireless communications. On the other hand, unequal erasure protection codes at the transport layer turned out to be an efficient method to protect video data generated by the application layer by exploiting their intrinsic properties. In this paper, the two techniques are jointly optimized in order to enable recovering lost data in case the protection is performed separately. We show that the cross-layer design proposed herein outperforms the performance of hierarchical modulation and unequal erasure codes taken independently

Progressive image transmission over OFDM systems using multiple antennas

A Joint source-channel coding (JSCC) scheme for SPIHT coded image transmission over OFDM systems with spatial diversity is proposed where no feedback channel is available. By using diversity techniques, the fading effects can be dramatically decreased and we show that subchannels in OFDM systems are indeed flat Rayleigh fading channels and approach Gaussian noisy channels when the diversity gain gets large, as a result, the system performance can be improved. The simulation results are presented with different number of antennas and different multipath delay and Doppler spread

Channel coding for progressive images in a 2-D time-frequency OFDM block with channel estimation errors.

Coding and diversity are very effective techniques for improving transmission reliability in a mobile wireless environment. The use of diversity is particularly important for multimedia communications over fading channels. In this work, we study the transmission of progressive image bitstreams using channel coding in a 2-D time-frequency resource block in an OFDM network, employing time and frequency diversities simultaneously. In particular, in the frequency domain, based on the order of diversity and the correlation of individual subcarriers, we construct symmetric n -channel FEC-based multiple descriptions using channel erasure codes combined with embedded image coding. In the time domain, a concatenation of RCPC codes and CRC codes is employed to protect individual descriptions. We consider the physical channel conditions arising from various coherence bandwidths and coherence times, leading to a range of orders of diversities available in the time and frequency domains. We investigate the effects of different error patterns on the delivered image quality due to various fade rates. We also study the tradeoffs and compare the relative effectiveness associated with the use of erasure codes in the frequency domain and convolutional codes in the time domain under different physical environments. Both the effects of intercarrier interference and channel estimation errors are included in our study. Specifically, the effects of channel estimation errors, frequency selectivity and the rate of the channel variations are taken into consideration for the construction of the 2-D time-frequency block. We provide results showing the gain that the proposed model achieves compared to a system without temporal coding. In one example, for a system experiencing flat fading, low Doppler, and imperfect CSI, we find that the increase in PSNR compared to a system without time diversity is as much as 9.4 dB

Combined Source and Channel Strategies for Optimized Video Communications

ISBN 978-953-7619-70-

Optimized Scalable Image and Video Transmission for MIMO Wireless Channels

In this chapter, we focus on proposing new strategies to efficiently transfer a compressed image/video content through wireless links using a multiple antenna technology. The proposed solutions can be considered as application layer physical layer (APP-PHY) cross layer design methods as they involve optimizing both application and physical layers. After a wide state-of-the-art study, we present two main solutions. The first focuses on using a new precoding algorithm that takes into account the image/video content structure when assigning transmission powers. We showed that its results are better than the existing conventional precoders. Second, a link adaptation process is integrated to efficiently assign coding parameters as a function of the channel state. Simulations over a realistic channel environment show that the link adaptation activates a dynamic process that results in a good image/video reconstruction quality even if the channel is varying. Finally, we incorporated soft decoding algorithms at the receiver side, and we showed that they could induce further improvements. In fact, almost 5 dB peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) improvements are demonstrated in the case of transmission over a Rayleigh channel

LAR Image transmission over fading channels: a hierarchical protection solution

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to present an efficient scheme to transmit a compressed digital image over a non frequency selective Rayleigh fading channel. The proposed scheme is based on the Locally Adaptive Resolution (LAR) algorithm, and the Reed-Solomon error correcting code is used to protect the data against the channel errors. In order to optimize the protection rate and ensure better protection we introduce an Unequal Error Protection (UEP) strategy, where we take the hierarchy of the information into account. The digital communication system also includes appropriate interleaving and differential modulation. Simulation results clearly show that our scheme presents an efficient solution for image transmission over wireless channels, and provides a high quality of service, outperforming the JPWL scheme in high bit error rate conditions

Hierarchical modulation with signal space and transmit diversity in Nakagami-m fading channel.

M. Sc. Eng. University of KwaZulu-Natal 2013.Hierarchical modulation (HM) is a promising scheme for wireless image and video transmission, exploiting the benefits of unequal error protection to ensure enhanced system performance. However, there is a limiting factor to the benefits of using only hierarchy to improve bit error rate (BER) performance of a transmission system. Diversity, namely signal space diversity (SSD) and Alamouti transmit diversity (ATD), can be introduced to improve BER performance results for HM systems. This dissertation presents the BER analysis of hierarchically modulated QAM with SSD and using maximal ratio combining (MRC) to retrieve the transmitted symbol from receiver antennas. In addition, the study includes the BER analysis of an identical system in an ATD scheme employing two transmit antennas and receiver antennas with MRC. SSD comprises of two fundamental stages: constellation rotation and component interleaving. The angle at which the constellation is rotated can affect the performance of the system. In the past, the rotation angle is determined based on a design criterion which maximizes the diversity order by minimizing the Euclidean square product or, alternatively, minimizes an SER expression. In this dissertation, a simple method for determining a rotation angle at which system performance is optimal for hierarchical constellations is presented. Previously, the BER analysis for HM involves an intricate approach where the probability of an error occurring is determined by considering the probability of a transmitted symbol exceeding past a set decision boundary. This dissertation presents the Nearest Neighbor (NN) union bound approach for determining an accurate approximation of the BER of an HM system with SSD. This method of analysis is later extended for an ATD scheme employing HM with SSD. Although introducing diversity elevates the system performance constraints on HM, it does so at the cost of detection complexity. To address this issue, a reduced complexity maximum-likelihood (ML) based detector is also proposed. While the conventional ML detector performs an exhaustive search to find the minimum Euclidean distance between the received symbol and all possible modulated symbols, the proposed detector only considers the nearest neighbors of the received symbol. By reducing the number of comparisons, a complexity reduction of 51.43% between the proposed detector and the optimal detector for 16-QAM is found